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As the city’s least violent year in a quarter of a century draws to a close, you’d think cops would be dancing on the ceiling.

After all, the last time we had less than the 45 homicides in a year, Lionel Richie topped the pop charts.

But Toronto Police are reluctant to pat themselves on the back for the steadily declining homicide rate, which has been virtually cut in half in just four years.

“First off, that’s still a lot of lives that have been lost,” civilian spokesman Park Pugash said recently, explaining one murder is still too many.

“But also, if we step forward and take credit for the drop in homicides in 2011, then what happens if the murders go up next year? Do we take the blame?” he asked rhetorically.

The 45 killings the city saw in the last 12 months is significantly less than the 61 murders endured a year earlier. But more importantly, it was the fourth straight year that the number of homicides dropped in Toronto.

In 2007, 86 people were slain. The number of murders dropped to 70 in 2008, then 62 in 2009.

The most violent year in the city’s history was 1991 when there were a whopping 89 homicides.

And to find a year that was safer than 2011, you have to look all the way back 25 years to 1986.

That year Top Gun was in theatres, Family Ties was on TV, Mike Tyson became boxing’s youngest heavyweight champ ever, Tommy Lee of Motley Crue married actress Heather Locklear, the Iran-Contra affair was made public, the Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded, the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, IBM unveiled the first laptop computer and there were only 37 killings in Toronto.

A recent media report suggested a rise over the last decade in the average age of Torontonians from 35.7 to 37 could be responsible for the decline in slayings.

But Pugash doesn’t believe such a small change in the average age of the population could be responsible for such a large drop in killings.

He said it’s impossible to point a finger at any one thing and most likely there are numerous factors that have led to the decline in slayings.

TAVIS (Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy) has been heralded as one of those factors in recent years.

The program was introduced by police Chief Bill Blair in 2006 — just before the violence began to dissipate — and puts more officers on the streets, particularly in at-risk communities.

“Our TAVIS officers have been building relationships in neighbourhoods across the city and that has certainly helped,” Pugash said.

With more cops on the street pounding home the importance of police and community working together, he said people feel safer coming forward with information.

“We’ve been getting better and better assistance from the public,” Pugash said. “That’s very encouraging.”

He said the increased help from citizens no doubt has had a ripple effect.

Not only has it allowed police to solve more crimes, it also has sent a message to the bad guys, Pugash said, explaining people are less likely to break the law when they believe they will be caught.

“Police are only as effective as the cooperation they get from the public,” he said.

With more witnesses coming forward as well as a new approach to investigating murders in 2011, the Homicide Squad has had an especially successful year.

A year ago the Unit was being harshly criticized for having a clearance rate 45%. More murders have since been solved, so that number has now climbed to almost 54%.

But that low rate led to a new group method of investigating killings.

Homicide was divided into three teams with an inspector at the help of each, allowing police to “focus their resources” in the immediate aftermath of a murder, Pugash said.

So far, Homicide detectives have already solved more than 65% of the killings from 2011.